At the age of four, I was diagnosed with a minor heart defect. I remember the hospital specialist explaining how controlling my weight was the key to health of my body. Little did I know the toll that conversation would take on the health of my mind.

My diagnosis, coupled with the fact that my mother had always battled with her size, meant my early years were filled with my weight, my waist and my calorie content being measured regularly.

I have vivid memories of attending school friends’ parties knowing I’d be in trouble for eating too much cake; of being the only one eating from a separate “healthy" menu in the school canteen; and knowing I'd have to submit to my mother's weekly weigh-ins where I couldn’t gain a pound without there being serious consequences.

By the time I hit secondary school, the apron strings were loosened. Suddenly I was able to taste freedom, and forbidden foods - and my weight increased. It’s typical that when a child has a behaviour restricted, they do the precise opposite as soon as they get the chance. I did, and then some.

I went from seven and a half stone at the age of 11 to a massive 17 stone by the time I was 16, even though I was a mere 5’8 in height. I gained two stone a year for five years.

It was presumed by everyone that I was just being greedy, and rebellious, and that I needed punishing. It’s only on reflection that I can see - with complete clarity - that I was eating not only because I was free to do so, but because it was a symptom of my unhappiness. What I needed was someone to find out exactly why I was eating to excess.

Although the details of the story are sketchy (the family's identities have been concealed), it was revealed that the boy's parents were questioned on suspicion of child cruelty and neglect. And yet, like my own parents, they don't appear to be bad people - just naive and uneducated on how to deal with the situation in which they find themselves. They also seem to be in denial about the severity of the problem.

“His weight isn’t that much of a big deal," the boy's mother was quoted as saying. "I’m chubby and the whole of my husband’s side of the family is big.”

I beg to differ. If she is being questioned by police because her son, who is 5'1, and close to double his healthy weight - and has been excluded from certain school activities due to his size, that's a very big deal indeed.

For the boy, the crux of the matter is how his parents to choose to address the problem; too lax and he’ll just continue to get bigger; too heavy-handed and the risk is that he will feel even more isolated than he no doubt does already. But if the situation isn’t sorted out properly, it won’t just be physical weight the boy is carrying, but a physiological weight he’ll carry with him forever.

A fat childhood can haunt you for the rest of your days. That feeling of being pre-judged by others and shamed by your appearance never goes away, especially when it takes root at an age when you’re just not equipped to deal with it.

A boy's teenage years are difficult enough without the additional burden of obesity. During mine, I would fear leaving the house, terrified of what I’d face outside. When I did pluck up the courage, strangers would fuel my shame with cruel, unprovoked comments about how fat and ugly I was. At school, the physical and emotional bullying from other kids, just because I was fat, was humiliating. I wonder if this 11-year old is going through the same thing?

As a fat child, really simple things become a massive source of embarrasment. School PE lessons were a weekly exercise in torture. In the changing rooms or on the pitch, you’re laughed at because you’re different. Usually we associate this kind of cruelty as coming from other kids. In my case, it came from the teachers too. I was once told by a PE teacher in front of my entire school year that I needed a sporting bra. My class mates were encouraged by the teacher to make “warthog” noises when I couldn’t get out of the swimming pool easily.

Like many bullying victims, I coped by becoming the class clown, with an arsenal of witty one-liners at my disposal. I had grown used to hearing the other kids laugh, but now I could launch pre-emptive strikes, making jokes at my own expense. You learn quickly that if you put yourself down first, you prevent others getting the chance.

The irony? The thing which allowed me to cope with it all? My old friend, food. The worse I felt, the more I ate. Which of course led to me getting fatter. And so the cycle - and the shame - continued.

And it’s the shame you take with you into adulthood, long after you've learnt to control your weight and your impulses to overeat. The external voices that spent all those years make you feel worthless eventually turn into your own voice inside your own head. So even in my twenties, when I lost weight, I still didn’t believe I was thin. I was still ashamed and I still felt an overwhelming urge to run away from all those horrible things I heard as a child, not realising the voice that was repeating the insults and put-downs was now my own.

That’s why it’s so important to discover exactly why the boy in the recent news story - and many other kids like him - are so overweight, so that something can be done to help them before they end up badly scarred. The solution is not to merely put boys like him on a strict diet, or punish their parents, or (as has happenedin over 70 cases in the UK in the past five years), take him into care, but to understand and address the deeper reasons behind their weight gain.

In my case, the strict diets that I was put on simply reinforced the idea that I wasn’t good enough as I was. Remember this isn’t a secure adult deciding to pop along to a slimming class - this is an impressionable, vulnerable child.

To get to the root of the problem it's vital that we as a society take a good hard look at how we treat food and dieting in general. Because I believe we have all been woefully let down by governments who would rather arrest ill-educated parents of fat children than put basic safeguards in place to stop people making bad lifestyle choices. Why? Because governments appear to have no idea on nutrition, and continue to allow all of us to be duped by a “diet” industry that’s actually making us fatter.

I’ve educated myself through nutritionists, personal trainers and therapists, and it’s all taught me one thing about diets; they don’t work. Yes, a crash diet, or restricting calories, will get weight off you in the short term. But your body will simply put that weight back on, the moment you start eating normally.Yet the NHS still endorses calorie restrictionas a way of slimming.

Weight management is not only about managing amounts, but about managing the types of foods you eat. How can a calorie controlled diet work, where calories in chocolate are compared with calories in broccoli? It doesn’t add up, yet the government is still pushing this mis-information. That, along with a food industry selling us meals labelled as “low fat and healthy”, even when it is full of sugar, means adults really don’t stand a chance, let alone children.

Aren’t governments supposed to help us with accurate labelling and health information? Aren’t they meant to educate us? That’s why cookery lessons in schools should be compulsory. How is it I learned useless information about rock formations, yet learning how to cook in school was just an option (and one for the least academically-able kids at that)? Everyone needs to eat. Therefore everyone needs educating about food - healthy food.

For me, luckily, things eventually turned out OK. Now, in my thirties I’m secure and happy enough to realise my parents made some bad choices for the best possible reasons, and we now have a great relationship. At the same time, the drive to escape my childhood demons has given me a massive amount of ambition. The quick wit I developed to fend off the bullies, I now put to good use hosting a successful radio show on LBC. And in general, I consider myself a pretty tough cookie (forgive the food analogy).

But I do sometimes wonder whether it’s been a price worth paying? What if someone had actually tried to find out what the cause of my unhappiness was instead of trying to shame me into weight loss?

No-one eats themselves into obesity just because they’re greedy. It’s always a symptom of something else. An alcoholic or drug addict isn’t considered greedy. They’re considered ill, and the help and compassion they need is available to them. But kids or adults eating themselves to death are considered gluttonous, or their parents are deemed neglectful. The sooner we realise that obesity is as much a mental health problem as a physical one, the sooner we stop reading stories like the one about the boy from Norfolk. We'll then also be on the right track to lose the weight of the£6 billion that obesity is costing the NHS every year.